Kryptonite
by ThirteenWishes
Summary: Sequel to Six Feet From the Edge. Eli and Clare have secrets and scars, just like everybody. This is the part where they're supposed to accept what happened, where they're supposed to heal, but nothing in life is ever that easy. OOC Eclare.
1. Chapter 1

Have you ever looked in a mirror?

Well, of course you have. Duh. Everyone has looked in a mirror at some time or another.

The point is that your reflection, the face you see looking back at you, well, that isn't really your face. You see yourself backwards, flipped and opposite the way everyone else sees you.

Or maybe you see yourself just fine, and it's the rest of the world who has is wrong.

There's some kind of lesson in there somewhere. The way you see yourself, that's not the way everyone else sees you, and not just in the physical sense. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you'll never look at yourself the same way others look at you. You might get close. You might try to flip your reflection in your mind. But you'll never really grasp what others see, what they think, what they feel. It'll always be a mystery, your reflection. Always.

"Do you feel like you weren't given a choice?"

Eli rolled his eyes, wondering how much Dr. Alger was paid to act as a human parrot. Bianca looked pissed, her hands gripping the arms of her wheelchair, and he couldn't help but think of how hot she would be if she wasn't crippled.

She was pretty, of course. She was beautiful. But you couldn't call a girl in a wheelchair _hot_, no matter how stereotypical that seemed. You could think to yourself, _Wow, I bet she was really hot before_. Before she tried to kill herself and ended up stuck to the chair for the foreseeable future. It was a horrible label, a horrible stereotype, but that was the way the world was. Horrible.

Eli glanced down at his hand, his fingers loosely intertwined with Clare's, and then up to the girl's face. She was staring straight at Bianca, seeming to be deep in thought.

Well, maybe only _parts _of the world were horrible.

"I made a fucking choice," Bianca snarled. "This wasn't it."

They were allowed to use any words they wanted, of course, here in group therapy. They were allowed to say whatever the hell they wanted. Nothing was off-limits. But it felt like a trick, like Dr. Alger would report directly to their parents or guardians or whoever, even though she was legally bound not to. Bianca didn't seem to have that problem, though.

"You wish that you could go backwards, do it all over again?" Dr. Alger asked.

Most of the time, Dr. Alger got what they were saying. She wasn't as clueless as all the other assholes they had to put up with.

But she had her moments, of course.

Bianca laughed. "Yeah. Like _backwards _was some amazing place to be."

"What does that mean?" Dr. Alger asked innocently.

Bianca settled back into her wheelchair, closing her eyes and broadcasting the words she didn't need to say. _I'm done talking._

Oh, damn it. That meant that Dr. Alger would move on to someone else who hadn't shared their story. Probably either Eli or Clare, maybe Drew but not likely. She always seemed to pinpoint on Eli; it was like, in her mind, his dark clothing and sarcastic attitude were cries for help. She didn't seem to realize that he was like that _before _Julia died.

Julia. Even now, months after that night, her name sent a small twinge of pain through his chest. It shouldn't, not anymore. After all, he had Clare now.

He shouldn't be there, in that suicide support group. Neither should Clare. Not anymore.

They were better now.

Okay, maybe that wasn't entirely true.

Eli knew that _maybe _he was depending on Clare a little too much, but hey, she was certainly leaning on him even more. Not that that was a bad thing; he _wanted _to help her, _wanted _to be there for her.

He was just… well, he was scared. Scared of himself. Scared of _her_, of that fragile fifteen-year-old girl. He was scared of being hurt again.

He shouldn't be. He should have gotten over that _long _ago. It had been _months_.

Right?

000

"No. No, I can't do this."

"Clare, come on." Darcy nudged her shoulder pointedly, giving her the _I'm your older sister and you'll do what I say because it's for your own good _look that Clare had always hated when she was a little kid.

Well, some things never change.

"You _can _do this," Darcy continued. "You _have _to do this. Remember what you told me, Clare? You told me that you couldn't let him get away with what he did, that you couldn't let him _win_. Isn't that what you said? Clare, look, I know it's hard. I… I remember telling them… what happened to me. But it'll be okay, I promise."

"You said… that she might take it hard. That she might… make some mistakes."

Darcy nodded slowly. "She might, but… just remember that she loves you. You're her daughter, and it might take a… a little while for her to… accept what happened, but she will, I promise. She'll be there for you and she'll want you to press charges against him for what he did to you." Anger crept into Darcy's voice as she talked about _him. _They usually steered away from saying his name, like it was some sort of taboo.

"I can't," Clare repeated, but she knew she'd lost the fight. Darcy would make _sure _that she told Helen, whether Clare liked it or not.

"_Clare_."

"Just… how do I do this? How… how do I say something like this?" Clare was already starting to falling apart, her hands shaking and her voice trembling. "How did you?"

"I just… I sat her and Dad down and told them the truth. I told them that I snuck out to the party and… and everything that happened… afterwards," Darcy explained. "It's hard, Clare. I know it's hard to talk about. But you already told Eli, and you told me. What's one more time?"

_It's not going to be just one more time. If… if I actually go to… to trial or something, I'll have to tell them what happened again and again and again and…_

"I _can't_."

"Clare…" Darcy sighed. "Like I said. You _have _to. No more secrets, okay, Clare Bear?"

_No more secrets._ Beneath her sleeves, the new scars burned.

"Okay." Her voice was small and quiet, but Clare was surprised that there was a voice at all.

"Do you want me to go get her?" Darcy offered.

"Y-yes, please," Clare whispered.

She closed her eyes, counted to ten. And again. And again.

_One, two, three…_

She could hear Darcy's footsteps, leaving the room. A door opened, closed, and Darcy's voice rose and fell as she spoke quietly.

_Four, five, six…_

She bit her lip, trying to breathe deeply and evenly. It wasn't a big deal. It _wasn't _a big deal.

Hell, who was she kidding?

She was about to tell her mother that her ex-boyfriend… that he _hurt_ her, in more ways than one, and that drove her to try to kill herself. If that wasn't a big fucking deal, she didn't know what was.

_Seven, eight, nine, ten…_

Darcy was speaking again, her voice raised a little, but Clare didn't want to know what she was saying.

_One, two, three…_

She remembered Eli's eyes when he told her that what happened to her wasn't her fault, that she was amazing and incredible and beautiful. He thought that she was beautiful. It didn't matter what anyone else thought but Eli.

Her fingers brushed over her scars through the fabric of her shirt, which didn't help the shaking.

_Four, five, six…_

"Clare? Darcy said you wanted to talk to me?"

Helen was standing in front of her, tapping her foot impatiently. Darcy had stayed in the other room; Clare wasn't sure if she was grateful or worried that she was alone with her mother, given the situation.

"Yeah," Clare mumbled, and then repeated louder, "Yeah, I do."

"What about?"

Clare wanted to chicken out, to tell her mother that it was nothing, but she knew that if she didn't get it out now, she'd never gather the courage to tell her. She tried to think of the words to say, any words that would explain what had happened.

Helen sighed heavily. "Clare, can this wait? I'm very busy."

_No. No, this can't wait._

For the first few weeks after Clare had attempted suicide, her mother had been hovering over her almost obsessively, always checking up on her and making sure that everything was okay. Then, for reasons Clare couldn't comprehend, she'd kind of… switched off. Clare hadn't noticed at first, but now Helen was acting like nothing had ever happened. Clare could have understood if that was just her mother's way of dealing with it, but she'd realized that Helen preferred to _not _deal with it, that she wanted everything back to normal as soon as possible. She stopped asking about Clare's therapy or how school was going. It was like she didn't even care.

Well… of course she cared. Clare was her daughter, after all.

"No. No, Mom, this is _important_," Clare snapped.

"_Don't _use that tone with me, young lady."

"Sorry," she whispered, biting back the surge of anger. Where did that come from? For the past… hell, for the past _year _now, ever since she'd met Mark, her emotions had just been completely out of control. "But… Mom, I swear that this is important. Really, really important. I need to talk to you about this _right now_."

Helen offered Clare a smile that _almost _passed off as real. "Okay, honey. What do you want to talk about?"

"You… you know how I dated… Mark a little while ago, right?"

Helen nodded, her smile changing into one of complete honesty. "Mark Fitzgerald? He's a nice boy, isn't he? Why did you two break up again?"

"Because he… Mom, he hurt me. He… he used to hit me and…" A choked sob burst past her lips, shaking her entire body. "Mom I… I didn't want to, I _swear _I d-didn't want to…"

"You… Clare, oh God, Clare, you had _sex _with him?"

"No!" Clare nearly shouted. "No, I didn't… I didn't want to," she repeated, biting her lip to hold back another sob. "Please… _please _believe me. I didn't…"

"Oh, God, I can't. I can't go through this again." Helen shook her head, refusing to even look at her daughter. "I can't deal with this, not again…"

"This isn't about you."

Darcy was standing in the doorway, her eyes narrowed.

"Stay out of this," Helen snapped. "This isn't about you, either."

"No, you're right. This is about _Clare._ This is about the fact that her boyfriend _abused_- physically and sexually, no matter how much you want to deny it- her and you're acting like it's the end of the world for you. _You _can't deal with this? How the hell do you think _she _feels? Look, Mom, I don't give a damn whether you don't want to deal with this or not. You're going to have to."

Helen looked back and forth between Darcy and Clare, and then she sighed heavily. "Fine. _Fine_. What else?"

_What else?_

Clare couldn't speak. Her mouth was hanging open slightly, her eyes wide.

"Clare's pressing charges," Darcy announced.

"Fine," Helen repeated. Her eyes were dark, stormy, and she looked… pissed off, like Clare and Darcy were just wasting her time. "Do whatever the hell you want."

000

Clare was quieter than she usually was, and that was saying a lot. She was picking at her food; Eli guessed that she'd eaten about three bites the entire time they'd been there.

"Is everything okay?" he ventured, hoping that she wouldn't freeze him out again.

"I told my mom," she mumbled, so quietly Eli barely heard her.

"What?"

"I told my mom what happened. With… with Mark. I told her that I… didn't want to do… that with him, and I don't think she believed me," Clare admitted, staring straight down at her hands. "Darcy told her that I'm p-pressing charges, and… she told me to do whatever the hell I wanted. It was like she didn't… like she didn't care."

"Clare, I'm sure that's not true."

"Yeah, me too." She didn't sound so sure.

"Just give her time," Eli advised. "She'll come around."

"That's what Darcy said. More or less." She clasped her hands together, intertwined her fingers, and then pulled them apart and hid them underneath the table. She glanced up, meeting his eyes for the first time since they'd sat down. "Eli… where exactly are we?"

"Um… at the Dot?" Eli offered.

"No, I mean… _us_. Are we… are we together or something?"

"Well… do you want to be?"

Clare nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, I do. But I'm not sure if I'm… ready for a relationship right now."

"We could take it slow."

"Are you asking me out, Goldsworthy?"

"Guess I am, Edwards."

She nodded again. "Okay. Taking it slow sounds… good."

Yeah. Yeah, it _did _sound good.

He hoped to the God he didn't believe in that he could handle it.

000

**A/N: If you didn't read Six Feet From the Edge, this might be a little confusing.**

**Anyways, I figured that I already took it slow in the prequel… why not get straight to the good stuff?**

**I have no idea how often this story will be updated. It probably will be less than Six Feet From the Edge was, because I've had less time to write lately, but it'll be good, I promise.**

**Hope you like it!**

**I do not own Degrassi.**


	2. Chapter 2

"I feel like I haven't talked to you in forever! It's been months, hasn't it?"

Alli's voice was too bright, too happy, even over the phone. One upon a time, she'd been Clare's best friend forever. They'd even exchanged those stupid necklaces, Clare's saying BEST and Alli's saying FRIENDS, way back in sixth grade. They'd told each other every secret, listened to each others' complaints, and gushed over their crushes. Nothing was off-limits between them; they were like sisters, almost.

Of course, that was before Clare and Mark had started dating. That was when Clare found herself sucked into a world of darkness and secrets, where nothing was as it seemed, where you couldn't trust even the people who claimed they loved you.

She hadn't been able to tell Alli any of it. As Mark consumed most of her time, she found herself growing apart from her best friend, her sister in everything except for bloodline, and in some ways, she was glad. If Alli knew her secret… everything would fall apart.

By now, Alli had to know that Clare had tried to kill herself. She hadn't called, hadn't visited. Clare wasn't upset, not really; she knew that Alli hadn't been able to think of what to say. After all, in the last two or three months before Clare had leaped into the ocean, they'd been less like best friends and more like acquaintances. There were no sleepovers, no gossip-filled phone calls, no e-mails, nothing. Alli accused Clare of being too clingy, too wrapped up in Mark; she hadn't known the full story. No one had.

So Clare had told Alli that maybe they were just growing apart, that nothing lasted forever.

It had been months.

"Yeah, ever since I started at Degrassi," Clare answered casually, trying to force her tone to match Alli's.

"We have to catch up. Coffee or something, you know?"

"Yeah, coffee sounds great."

"So what's going on in the life of Clare?" Alli questioned.

"Nothing much." What was she supposed to say? She couldn't tell Alli what had happened, not over the phone and not over coffee.

She was already tired of telling her story.

"Nothing at all?"

"Well… there's this guy," Clare admitted. No harm in mentioning that, right? Alli ate up that kind of information. It might even distract both of them from what had happened, what had changed. "His name's Eli. He's my…" Boyfriend? Really, really good friend? Crush? "English partner," she finished.

"Just your English partner?"

"We're kind of… together."

"Clare! Why didn't you tell me about this before?" Alli shrieked.

Clare smiled. For a moment, she actually felt like a normal teenage girl, with normal friends and a normal love life and a normal past.

Nothing in her life would ever be normal again.

"I'll tell you everything," Clare promised. Well, almost everything. "Coffee, right? There's this place at the Dot… want to meet me there tomorrow?"

000

Taking it slow. Taking it slow.

Why the hell had he agreed to that?

Eli knew that neither of them was ready to just jump right back into a relationship. He knew that Clare needed time, and hell, so did he. He didn't know if, one day, he would kiss Clare and think of Julia. He didn't know if, on their first official date, he'd compare her with Julia. He didn't know if he could ever be good enough for her.

But he missed her.

It was completely irrational, but every second he wasn't around Clare, he thought about her. Well, it was either her or Julia, and at least focusing his thoughts on Clare didn't hurt. At least he didn't feel guilty. But he thought about her all the time, wondered about what she was doing, who she was talking to, if she was okay or if she was hurting or if she was just empty, hollow, frozen…

He was driving himself even farther into the realm of insanity, and he knew it.

It was what she needed. It was what he needed, too. He was a fucking mess, so screwed up that even he didn't understand himself, and he needed time to work that out, just like Clare needed time…

Oh, God, this was so fucked up.

Everything was so fucked up.

It didn't make things any better that Clare was standing in front of him, hands on hips, demanding to know what was wrong this time. How he'd gotten another black eye, another bloody nose, another split lip, or whatever was wrong with his face this time.

"I can handle it," Eli told her, avoiding the question.

"You can handle what?" she questioned, her eyes narrowed.

"Everything," he lied. "Look, Clare, it's not a big deal or anything…"

"What's not a big deal? I don't even know what's wrong."

"Because I can handle it."

"Obviously, you can't!"

"You don't even know what it is!"

"Because you won't tell me!"

"Clare… I'm fine, okay? It was an accident," he lied. Oh, it was far from an accident, and Clare had to know that. He could see in her eyes that she didn't believe him, but she didn't seem surprised that he was lying to her. She looked like she expected him to lie.

And, for some reason, that hurt.

It hurt that she didn't believe him, that she didn't trust him. Of course, she had no reason whatsoever to trust him with anything. She was right to expect him to lie. Hell, if he didn't want that, maybe he should try telling the fucking truth sometime.

"Fine. Whatever," she snapped. "Obviously I'm not important enough for the truth."

"That's not what I said, Clare, and that's not what I meant…"

She shrugged. "Do whatever you want, Eli. Everyone's entitled to a secret, right?" She spoke the words bitterly, almost angrily. What or who was Clare angry at? Was it him?

And what was Clare's secret?

She could be hiding anything, not anymore, right? She told him everything.

But she didn't trust him. Not completely.

Eli didn't blame her, because even he didn't trust himself.

"So you're not mad?" he checked.

"Will this- whatever it is- happen again?" she asked, a little nervously. Her hand slid into his, and he immediately felt a thousand times better.

He wanted to promise her that it wouldn't. He wanted to tell her everything that had happened. He wanted to completely and totally spill his guts to her, because not only would it make him feel better, but it would prove to her that he trusted her.

Of course, he couldn't do that.

"I don't think so." Another lie, another secret, another drop of poison.

He knew that eventually, all this was going to come back to haunt him. Bite him in t/he ass and all that.

At the moment, though, he didn't really care.

He had Clare, and for right now, for that small moment in time, it was enough. He could forget everything else, ignore everyone else.

Because, in the big picture of his life, he knew exactly what mattered most.

000

"Oh my God, Clare!" Alli squealed, throwing her arms around her. Clare stiffened, but Alli didn't seem to notice, pulling back and holding Clare at arm's length to get a good look at her. "How are you doing? You look… um, you look good. Skinny. Have you been eating? You're not anorexic, are you?"

"No," Clare reassured her. She had a lot of issues, but an eating disorder wasn't one of them. Food hadn't exactly been her top priority for the last few months. She promised herself, again, that she wouldn't bring up the… suicide topic unless Alli asked her directly. She wanted this to be just a fun, friendly chance for them to drink coffee and catch up. "I'm good," she told Alli. It wasn't the truth, but it wasn't exactly a lie, either. She was certainly a lot better than she had been, anyways. "How have you been?"

"Wonderful!" Alli declared. "Well, I miss you a lot. We all do. Why'd you change schools, anyways?"

Shit. "Mom thought it would be a good idea for me to have a change of scenery," Clare replied, adding an exasperated eye roll at the end, like she couldn't believe that her mother had had the nerve to do such a horrible thing.

Alli pulled her towards a table, slamming her drink down so hard a few drops of the brown liquid splashed out over the top. "That sucks. Well, you're here now! So you can tell me about your Prince Charming, huh? Your more-than-English-partner?" There was a strange edge to her voice as she spoke the words, but Clare chose to ignore it. It probably wasn't anything, after all.

"His name's Eli," Clare replied, happy to be on a relatively safe subject.

"What's he like?"

"He's… he's really smart and funny, even though his sense of humor's a little dark, and sarcastic and kind- at least to me- and he's…" Mysterious, she thought. Secretive. Hurting. Broken. "He's just incredible," she finished, smiling a little.

"Sounds like true love," Alli grumbled.

"What's wrong?" Clare asked. Maybe she was just being paranoid, but she could've sworn that there was something… off about Alli now.

"It's just… are you sure you're not rushing into this?" Alli asked, her voice heavy with concern.

"What do you mean?"

"Look, Clare, maybe this Eli really is… incredible, like you say, but… are you sure you're ready for another relationship, especially after… what you did after Mark broke up with you? It's not healthy, depending so much on another person, and-"

"Wait, what? What do you mean, 'what you did after Mark broke up with you…'?"

"Clare, it's okay to admit it."

"Admit what?"

"Everyone knows what happened." Alli glanced away, down into her coffee. "Clare, I know you loved Mark, but… look, your mom says that you're in therapy now. Maybe that's helping. But what you did, Clare, that's… like I said, it's not healthy to be so… obsessed with someone. Just because he broke up with you doesn't mean that you have to try to kill yourself, and-"

"I- no! That's not why I… I mean, I didn't… do what I did because… because he broke up with me!" Clare felt like her thoughts were shattering, fragments floating around her mind.

"Clare, it's okay, you don't have to lie…"

"I'm not lying!" Clare nearly shrieked, panicking. Alli had been her friend. Why didn't she believe her?

"Clare-"

"I'm not lying, Alli. I'm not. That's not… that's not why I…"

"Clare," Alli sighed. "I want to help you, everyone just wants to help you…"

"But you can't. You can't."

"I know this must be hard for you-"

"You don't know anything!" Ignoring the fact that all eyes were on her, Clare leaped up out of her chair, tears pricking her eyes. She'd counted on Alli to be a distraction, to be a friend who would take her away from everything that was going on in her life. Instead, Alli had reminded her just how screwed up Clare really was.

She didn't believe her. She thought that Clare was some obsessed freak who was still in love with the guy who… who raped her.

Of course, Alli didn't know that.

Maybe she was right. Maybe Clare was crazy.

Maybe everything had already gone to hell and she was just a little late to the party.

000

**A/N: Before you guys start ranting over how much of a bitch Alli is, let me remind you that this whole story is in shades of gray. Alli really believes that Clare tried to kill herself because of Mark, and she's just trying to help.**

**(Of course, she loses brownie points for not believing Clare, but she's only human, after all.)**

**And Eli… well, he's Eli.**

**Reviews would make my day!**

**I do not own Degrassi.**


	3. Chapter 3

_I'll stop the world, I'll stop the whole world_

_From turning into a monster, eating us alive_

_Don't you ever wonder how we survive?_

_Well, now that you're gone, the world is ours_

_Well, you find your strength in solutions_

_But I like the tension and not always knowing the answers_

_But you're gonna lose it, you're gonna lose is…_

-Monster by Paramore

Eli never liked the rain.

Hell, he never liked snow, either. Or hail or sleet. Or sunshine or overcast or partly cloudy. All weather pretty much pissed him off, but sometimes, on cool fall mornings when the trees looked like fireworks, he would walk or just sit there with Julia, and he'd realize that everything was better when they were together. No matter the size of the black cloud that was hanging over Eli's head, Julia had the power to make it go away. She also had the power to make it a thousand times worse, and in a way, Eli had the same effect on her.

Mostly, they tried to make each other happy.

Sometimes, they tried to piss each other off.

Eli tried not to think of Julia, because when he did, he remembered all the reasons why he'd held the knife to his wrist that day. Sometimes he thought that, no matter how often Clare was around, no matter what she did, he'd never really forget those reasons because he'd never be able to forget Julia.

Most days, he was able to put it out of his mind, but sometimes, when he was staring out the window and the rain was pouring down, drenching the earth in a flood of a million tears- however stupid and sappy and emo that sounded- he just couldn't.

He closed his eyes, and he thought of Clare's scars, the slightly raised slashes standing out with horrible clarity against her skin. The thought of her hurting herself, the thought of her in any sort of pain…

Hypocrite. That was what he was. He was a fucking hypocrite.

He'd told Clare that it was wrong to hurt herself. And it _was _wrong. She shouldn't do that; she shouldn't be driven to such measures. There was always another option, always another route to take, but he'd done the same thing, so how could she believe him?

That was the problem he kept running in to. She had no reason to believe anything he did or said, no reason at all.

That wasn't his only problem, but it was major enough to distract him momentarily from the rest of the complications of hell.

000

Nothing really changed.

And at the same time, everything changed.

It was as gradual as it was sudden. It was as if, one day, Eli walked into the school and half of them hated him and half of them didn't care, and he was left to wonder if it had always been that way and he was only clued in right then, or if there actually had been some shift in the balance of the universe- or, at least, a shift in the balance of high school- and they were split in half, the people who wanted to kill him themselves and the people who just didn't give a shit one way or another.

And then there was Clare.

Eli remembered reading the Bible once, when he was about nine or ten, just sitting down and thinking that he'd read the Bible cover to cover to figure out what was so spectacular about Christianity. His parents weren't huge on religion; he'd been to church once, but that had been when he was just a little kid, three or four or something and mostly he just remembered people standing up and singing.

Anyways, so there was the fourth-grade Eli sitting there, thinking that it would be easy as anything to just read the entire freaking Bible in one sitting.

He got stuck about a page into the thing. The world wasn't created in seven days; the Earth itself was "created" over a period of thousands or millions or even billions of years, he wasn't sure on the number, and then it took forever to actually cool down and then another forever for life to emerge, thought scientists didn't know exactly when that happened, either…

The point was, God didn't just wave His hand and the world popped into being.

And God certainly didn't just wish mankind into being. There was rock-solid proof that humans evolved or something, and it didn't make sense how someone could just pluck a rib right out of some guy named Adam's chest and then suddenly there was a chick named Eve and they were perfect and happy until this talking snake convinced Eve to eat an apple, which was apparently against the rules and they were kicked out of paradise and basically doomed the rest of mankind.

Way to go, Eve.

So nine-year-old Eli had skipped around, flipping through the thin pages and frowning with his fists balling in frustration because he didn't understand at all. Forty days and forty nights of rain? Two of each animal on a boat? Some king who wanted to cut a kid apart and give half to each woman?

It didn't make any sense back then, and it didn't make any sense now.

Then there was light. Then there was animals and trees and plants and Adam and Eve. Then there was sin and knowledge and free will and pain and heartbreak and murder and war and rape and betrayal and lust and the Seven Deadly Sins. (He wasn't sure if that was supposed to be capitalized or not; who really knew when that book was concerned?)

Then there was Jesus and redemption and forgiveness and resurrection.

Then there was Christianity.

Then there was modern society (though this part wasn't in the Bible) and Protestantism and freedom of thought and, eventually, freedom of speech and religion and the right whatever and the freedom of independence or something (that was America, after all) and then there was confusion.

In Eli's mind, by fourth-grade rationality, nothing so confusing could possibly be real.

It took him a few years to make up his mind. Looking back, what truly sealed the atheism deal was Julia's death, because there was no way the Christian God, if he was so loving and kind and merciful and real, would just kill off someone like her.

And then there was Clare.

But Eli had always questioned his beliefs.

Anyways, people hated him and people ignored him and Clare… well, Clare was a mystery. She was as mysterious and confusing as God was, except for there was no way Eli _couldn't _believe in her, not with her standing right in front of him with a smile that didn't nearly cover the fact that her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. She'd been crying, probably all night.

He wished that she'd call him or something when that happened, that she'd trust him just a little bit more.

It all boiled down to trust, didn't it?

Trust and faith. Trust in God, trust in each other, trust in themselves. In God we trust. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth will set you free.

He was still confused. No, he was going fucking _crazy_, and here was his girlfriend (she _was _his girlfriend, right?) looking like she had sobbed her eyes out for forty days and forty nights and flooded the whole world with an ocean of salty tears.

He wanted to tell her about the guys who laughed and fist-bumped each other and punched him in the face when no one was looking and acted like they were God's gift to humanity and he was the spawn of Satan or something.

There he went with God again.

He wanted to tell Clare that he was so fucked up and so pissed off and so empty and so tired of everything, tired of all of this, and that he still wanted to kill not only himself but everyone else. He wanted to watch them bleed. He wanted to hear them scream.

He was Elijah fucking Goldsworthy, and he scared himself.

Maybe they weren't the enemy. Maybe he was the enemy.

Maybe he was a monster.

But he threw his arm around Clare's shoulders anyways. He kissed the top of her head and asked her what was wrong in a soft voice and he promised himself that he wouldn't think like that, not anymore. He'd stop thinking like that, for Clare's sake if not his own. He wouldn't tell her, because she didn't need to know about his problems. He could take care of himself.

Because he was Elijah fucking Goldsworthy and he was already going to the hell he didn't believe in, but he wasn't going to drag her down with him.

In a split second, nothing changed.

And in an instant, everything changed.

000

At the beginning of the year, Clare and Eli had skipped at least twice a week. Mental health days, they called them. They would go to the Dot or Little Miss Steaks or to any place where they would be able to hide, where they would be able to sit and escape and have everyone turn a blind eye to them, and they would just sit there and maybe talk but most likely just stare off into space. Just being together, just feeling each others' presences, was enough to make everything a hundred percent better.

But now, Clare wasn't sure.

There had been something in Eli's eyes, something dark and almost _scary_, when he was walking down the hallway. When he'd seen her, whatever it was hadn't exactly disappeared; it was more like he'd shoved whatever he was feeling away, back into his mind, like he didn't want her to see.

She wasn't scared, not really, not of Eli. She was scared of what he was thinking, of what he was doing to himself. While she physically hurt herself, knife to flesh and warm blood flowing down skin, he… _abused _himself on a more mental level, never letting himself let go of his guilt over Julia's death. Clare knew that he hated himself, and it just about broke her heart. Why couldn't he see himself the way she did? Why couldn't he see himself through her eyes?

The sleeve of his jacket scratched a little roughly along the back of her neck, and she felt like as long as his arm was around her, as long as his jacket was scratching against her neck, everything would be okay. Eli would be okay, as long as he was near her, as long as she could see him. She had to believe that everything would be okay, that he wouldn't do anything… drastic.

"What's wrong?" he asked quietly, his lips brushing her hair. Clare leaned into him a little, taking a deep breath and trying to ignore the little voice in the back of her head that was screaming _Something's off, something's different, something's changed, something's wrong._

_Something's wrong._

"Nothing," she replied. It was funny, the word _replied._ Taken apart, it was _rep-lied_. Repetition lying, in other words.

"You want to get out of here?" Eli offered, those words he'd said so often in the past couple months. _Let's get out of here. Let's blow off school. Let's just go somewhere, by ourselves, and forget the rest of the world. We have each other, and that's all that matters. Let's just get out of here…_

"Why not?"

There was no reason why she shouldn't take a day off with Eli. Mental health day, right?

Mental health day for _him_. She could tell that he was tense, that there was something on his mind, something eating away at him, but she didn't know if it was just the usual or if it was something else, something that had to do with the lies and the secrets and the black eyes and the bloody noses and the split lips that showed up from time to time. She wasn't an idiot; she knew that something was wrong, that something was going on, no matter how many times he tried to blow it off.

It would be good for both of them to just get away from it all for a few hours.

Why not?

000

**A/N: No, Eli is not going to shoot up the school. Well… I don't think he will, anyways. Who knows what's going on in that mind of his?**

**And no, he did not have a sudden personality change. That was him just kind of opening up to himself; don't be surprised if you don't see that side of him for another few chapters. He's got a lot going on in his head right now, and he's kind of… freaking out a little.**

**If I get a lot of reviews, I'll update early. If not, I'll update in a few days, so no worries.**

**So review please! I do not own Degrassi.**


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